For over 25 years the Journal of the Auschwitz Foundation and Remembrance of Auschwitz has published the most recent research on all aspects of the Nazi camps and the Jewish and Gypsy genocides, and has taken part in the latest debates on the issues raised by their history and commemoration. At the time of the Journal’s 100th. issue, it was decided to respond to the growing interest in history and remembrance by opening its areas of research to include problems of mass violence in the historical long term.

27 January 1945. Seventy years ago the first soldiers of the Red Army marched into Auschwitz. One might argue that the camp was “liberated” then, but the truth is that neither Auschwitz, nor any of the other Nazi camps, was ever a priority to the Allied Powers. Primo Levi was one of the few survivors who knew how to hide and escape the enforced evacuation of the camps. With this dossier, we want to cast light on the complex figure that Levi was: a Jew, a deportee, a chemists, a witness, and a writer. It sets out to study his oeuvre and his interpretation of the notions of “resistance” and “engagement”, in order to understand how he eventually became a “professional survivor”, as he once described himself.